49ers QB Trent Dilfer (#12) gives 49ers QB Alex Smith (#11) a pat on the head in the 3rd qtr.
San Francisco 49ers vs Arizona Cardinals at the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Photo by Michael Maloney / San Francisco Chronicle on 9/10/06 in Glendale,AZ MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT less

49ers QB Trent Dilfer (#12) gives 49ers QB Alex Smith (#11) a pat on the head in the 3rd qtr.
San Francisco 49ers vs Arizona Cardinals at the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Photo by Michael ... more

Photo: Michael Maloney

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49ers QB Alex Smith (#11) throws in 4th qtr.
San Francisco 49ers vs Arizona Cardinals at the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Photo by Michael Maloney / San Francisco Chronicle on 9/10/06 in Glendale,AZ less

49ers QB Alex Smith (#11) throws in 4th qtr.
San Francisco 49ers vs Arizona Cardinals at the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Photo by Michael Maloney / San Francisco Chronicle on 9/10/06 in ... more

Photo: Michael Maloney

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49ers QB Alex Smith (#11) looks for a receiver under pressure by Cardinals Adrian Wilson (#24) and Cardinals Kendrick Clancy (#70).
San Francisco 49ers vs Arizona Cardinals at the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Photo by Michael Maloney / San Francisco Chronicle on 9/10/06 in Glendale,AZ Ran on: 09-11-2006
Alex Smith (right) showed he's way ahead of the curve in his second season.
Ran on: 09-11-2006
Alex Smith (right) showed he's way ahead of the curve in his second season. less

49ers QB Alex Smith (#11) looks for a receiver under pressure by Cardinals Adrian Wilson (#24) and Cardinals Kendrick Clancy (#70).
San Francisco 49ers vs Arizona Cardinals at the new Cardinals Stadium in ... more

Photo: Michael Maloney

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Smith improves, looks like leader

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The third play of the 2006 season all but screamed "Here we go again -- and we're going nowhere." A wild, unpolished pass left Alex Smith's right hand and headed right for a defensive back. Smith made things easy for David Macklin, the Cardinals' cornerback covering Arnaz Battle, but Macklin couldn't make the catch. Smith had a second chance. He turned it into a good second impression.

First, he drove the 49ers to a touchdown on their first possession of the year.

Later, he threw a beautifully timed 52-yard touchdown pass that was nullified by an inaccurate holding call. He didn't let it faze him.

He also took a nasty hit out of bounds and didn't let that faze him, either. "You know what?" he said later. "As soon as I saw the (penalty) flag, all that pain kind of goes away."

Above all, the sophomore quarterback didn't make big mistakes. No interceptions. No dropped snaps. No fumbles. The rookie jitters of a year ago weren't forgotten, but they were momentarily countered.

Smith did make a few errors of omission, and he didn't carry the 49ers to a comeback win in their season opener Sunday, but he came ludicrously close.

In the final minute and 41 seconds of the 34-27 loss to Arizona, working with no timeouts, he completed passes of 15, 46 and 25 yards. He did everything with authority, whether spiking the ball to stop the clock or summoning his teammates back toward the line of scrimmage with urgent, yet un-panicked, arm gestures.

"There are a lot of little things that go into how you play quarterback, too, that are (about) how you are perceived by the guys around you," 49ers coach Mike Nolan said. "It's not just getting into the huddle, calling the play and running it. You are the leader, and you have to carry yourself in a way that makes the other guys say, 'This guy can do it.' "

For a while now, Nolan has been telling reporters that Smith has the requisite presence of an NFL quarterback. Until Sunday, no one had seen it in a game. Smith had shown some promise in the exhibition season. But exhibition games are essentially phony enterprises, and you can't fake presence.

"You see the guy, he's calming down, and I'm not saying he's as calm as he needs to be, but his poise is coming," said wide receiver Antonio Byrant, who attributes a lot of Smith's growth to the tutelage of Trent Dilfer, the type of seasoned quarterback the 49ers unsuccessfully sought to be Smith's back-up last year.

Bryant, who finished with 114 yards receiving, makes a big difference, too. He caught 96 of those yards in the fourth quarter, and he was the receiver on the nullified 52-yard touchdown pass. Through the end of the third quarter, though, Bryant had only one catch for 18 yards, and he wasn't happy.

"Me and Alex could have been in a boxing match in the first half," said Bryant, whose verbal leaps match the ones he makes on the field. He explained further: "Being a receiver, not being as involved as I wanted to be, I have to keep my composure. The 2002 Antonio would have been frustrated. 2003 Antonio would have thrown his helmet, but not 2006."

Bryant joked about the difficulty of seeing the youngest guy in the huddle as the team's leader: "It's like showing up at boot camp and having a 9-year-old tell you to scrub the floor with your toothbrush." But he also said that Smith had managed to have an emotional/motivational effect on him Sunday, particularly when he was calling people back to the line in the final two minutes.

Smith knew that he had improved substantially over last year. His statistics (23 of 40, 288 yards, 1 TD) said as much, and his comfort level offered a few hints. But he was reluctant to take many compliments after a loss, or to take credit away from Bryant, his offensive line or running back Frank Gore. Smith responded quickly and easily when asked what part of his game had progressed the most.

"The biggest thing, I think, weren't the big passes. In my opinion, they were the little check-downs you see," he said. "... Last year, it really took me awhile to get to a back, whereas this year, you play a little more with anticipation, a little ahead of the game, and so in that coverage, bang, I check it quick but I am getting it to the back, and all of a sudden, they went for 10 yards instead of getting hit and tackled, whereas last year, it took me a little longer."

Nolan saw a lot of that confidence captured in Smith's body language. As instructed, he kept looking forward, never casting his eyes downward, especially as he approached the huddle.

"I said it to him one time last week," Nolan said, "and all week long, he did it every time, I never said a word, I didn't even remind him. He just was doing it, so I let it be."

And he went to a place he had never been before, where "Here we go again" follows the loss, but only in a whisper.